Greg Screws

Anchor/Reporter

Greg is very much in demand as a public speaker. His life experience of covering news, sports, personalities and overcoming life’s difficulties makes for great after dinner and public speaking.

If there is a topic that requires an opinion, Greg will give you one. His favorite saying is “Right or wrong, I am rarely in doubt.”

Greg also brings you a weekly Taking Action feature, Deal or Dud. In “Deal or Dud,” Greg will test various products to see if they live up to their promises. Do you know of a product you’d like Greg to test? Maybe a company promises their product will give you better gas mileage, or their fertilizer will help your flowers grow more than you’ve ever seen. Email Greg about a particular product on our Deal or Dud page on WHNT.com. You can see these stories each Wednesday on WHNT News 19 at 10:00 p.m.

Growing up in Hartselle, Greg had an unspectacular basketball career which led him to become a little league parent as his daughter played hoops. Despite having Greg give her tips on how to play basketball, Emily became a very good player who played on a team that finished second in the AAU nationals and won the state sports festival three years in a row.

After leaving Hartselle and realizing higher education was a challenge in addition to being a goal, Greg went to the University of Alabama. His “brush with greatness moment” at the University of Alabama was seeing Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in a Shoney’s Restaurant. Greg majored in Communications at Alabama and worked at WCFT television before moving to WVTM in Birmingham. Greg’s stop in Birmingham television sparked his love of NASCAR and is also where he realized weathermen rarely pick up the check at lunch.

From there, Greg traveled to Richmond, Virginia for a stop at WRIC television. There Greg worked with Chip Tarkenton, the nephew of NFL great Fran Tarkenton. His friendship with Chip ended when Fran and Greg got into a heated discussion at Thanksgiving over the NFL Greats’ lack of success in Super Bowls. From Richmond, Greg moved back to Huntsville where he did sports and morning television for eight years. After 25 years in television, Greg had the itch to take a sabbatical and worked for 15 months with United Way of Madison County.

“Working at United Way of Madison County was a remarkably rewarding experience,” Screws said. “Thanks to the United Way of Madison County I realized how much I didn’t know about my own community, and am resolved to place community service as a priority in my life.”

But it took the call from a friend to make Greg start thinking television news once again. “Denise Vickers is one of the best news directors in the country,” said Greg. “I was flattered when she called and wanted me immediately to be on WHNT’s team of sharp and focused managers who take their work and craft very seriously.”

Greg’s daughter Emily works at the University of Alabama. Once Greg asked if she wanted to work in television and Emily said “you have to be kidding me.” Emily is very patient when her father calls her at least three times a day.

Recent Articles

The “tumbler” business is getting very competitive. The YETI line of tumblers and coolers are very successful, but they also come with a big price tag. Tumblers can run close to $40 and soft coolers can run $250-$300. The heavy duty coolers are even pricier. When you hit the stores, you can find tumblers that run from under $10 to the high end of around $40. We purchased a Corkcicle tumbler for $24.99 and a Contigo tumbler for $12.99. We […]

The Purrfect Arch is a cat toy described as a “self-groomer and massager.” I actually didn’t realize cats needed help with that. It’s not expensive. It only cost us $14.99. The Purrfect Arch, cleverly spelled, is an arch-shaped device wrapped in bristles. The cats walk in, around, or through, at their pleasure to scratch and be massaged. We tried to get WHNT NEWS 19’s Megan Brantley’s cats to use the arch. They were less than impressed. They just sort of […]

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – On Good Friday, many in Huntsville began their Easter celebration with the “Stations of the Cross” tradition. It takes place annually along the Aldridge Creek Greenway. People involved in “Stations of the Cross” move between 14 stops that involve scripture and stories about the path Jesus took to the crucifixion. The lineup of who organizes “Stations of the Cross” speaks volumes about its meaning. Many churches and denominations help organize the event. There are lessons along the […]

Like many of you, I’m amazed at how fast dirty dishes pile up. And if you let them pile up for three or four weeks, you can have a pile big enough to practice rock climbing. (OK … I don’t let dirty dishes go three or four weeks without washing, but you get my point. Really. I don’t .) Cascade Platinum Dishwashing Pods claim to get your dishes cleaner than ever. What got my attention were the packaging claims of […]

“Not many people who walk in with what you have walk out of here.” At that point, the emergency room doctor was the clear center of my ability to focus and she wasn’t done. “You got very lucky today,” she said. (More on what put me in the ER later. That is a topic for another day.) That was Feb. 16. Today, almost four weeks later, I’m back at work. And these people at work? They are the best people […]

My car trunk is a mess. When I drive around, I can hear all the “stuff” banging around and rolling across from one side to the other. Those times when I do get around to cleaning the car and organizing all of that important “stuff” it’s usually preceded by large breakfast, a nap, a bloody mary, a nap, time suck through social media, another bloody mary, another nap, and the occasional stop to listen to a Jason Isbell song. The […]

Most of us know about the difficulty of keeping up with keys and how frustrating it can be to keep them organized. There is a product called Clever Key that claims to be a better way of keeping keys organizes. The product is pretty simple to figure out. That is a good thing. Most of the “As Seen on TV” products have bad instructions and Clever Key is no different. You unscrew the top and then layer the keys from […]

Lazer Bond is one of the high profile products on the “As Seen on TV” infomercial circuit. It’s a “bonding agent” that claims to fix almost anything that breaks. The packaging says it will fix plastic, metal, wood, or glass. There is a UV light aspect to this that I really don’t understand. But ultimately, it claims to bond two broken pieces back together in three seconds. We ran into some problems quickly. The directions, I think are vague. Also, […]

When think something is “-tastic…” I usually don’t think eggs. “Tastic” as in fantastic. When I think “-tastic,” I think maybe – Giselle-tastic. Tom Brady, when he throws a touchdown pass, probably yells “THAT WAS GISELLE-TASTIC!” Of course, if you are Tom Brady, you probably get up every morning thinking, “this will be a Giselle-tastic kinda day.” If you are a Bama fan, the big win over Michigan State was “Crimson-Tide-tastic.” If you are an Auburn fan, Kick-Six was “once-in-a-lifetime-miracle-tastic.” […]

The top line on the packaging says “Crazy But It Works.” Well…. They’re half right. Can Caps are a plastic top to soda cans. They pop on either the 12-ounce standard soda cans. They also fit the oversized energy drink cans. But, they don’t fit on the small RedBull cans. They have a plastic locking flip top that, allegedly, keeps your drink from spilling. It also claims to keep insects out. It probably does work on keeping insects out. We […]

“We call this the most wonderful time of the year and there is a reason for that.” Chris Mitchell spends his life helping people with his counseling session at The Rock’s ministry. The holidays are a classic example of sensory overload. The lights, noise, and overindulgence in food and drink can jack the stress level up really high … really fast. How do you cope? “Good music. Getting in the right atmosphere. Right frame of mind. If you need to […]

There is an old saying about the perfect time to start saving money. It changes in the telling. But the simple version is … ‘the best time to start saving money is today.’ That was true yesterday, is true today, and will be true tomorrow. That perspective on finances comes at a time when many of us find ourselves overextended financially. We want to please family and loved ones so bad, it’s easy to slap that credit card down and […]